


Once

by dracoqueen22



Series: Six Feet From the Edge [2]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Angst, M/M, family doesn't have to love each other, past twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-03
Updated: 2014-12-03
Packaged: 2018-02-28 01:28:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2713910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jazz couldn't replace Sideswipe. Sunstreaker would never make him try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fuzipenguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzipenguin/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Six Feet From the Edge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178623) by [dracoqueen22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22). 



> For fuzipenguin, who gave me the prompt “Bumper Cars” for the Six Feet From the Edge 'verse

They were not always enemies. They did not always loathe each other.  
  
Once they were brothers, twins as a matter of fact. Once they were family. Once, Sunstreaker didn't need anyone so much as he needed Sideswipe. They were cut from the same spark, each half of a whole. Without him was agony, which was fine, because Sunstreaker couldn't imagine a place he'd rather be.  
  
Contrary to popular belief, love and hate could exist all at once, in the same mech for the same mech.  
  
Sideswipe was the one who walked away, but Sunstreaker betrayed him by not giving chase. He let him go. He let his anger rule his decision that orn.  
  
There was no apology that could weld them back together after that.  
  
Since then, it was a race to see who could hurt the other more. Hurt them physically the same way they ached on the inside.  
  
Sideswipe drowned himself in a slew of strangers, berthhopping in search of a futile cure.  
  
Sunstreaker withdrew from everyone. He didn't want pity. He didn't want sympathy or conversation or stock solutions.  
  
They were a split-spark but they weren't divided. They shared some things, like stubbornness. A refusal to admit wrongdoing.  
  
Sunstreaker kept to himself because he couldn't imagine convincing anyone else to be at his side. If his own brother couldn't stick around, why would a stranger? Why would someone who didn't share the same sparkbeat?  
  
Pain was a constant. He learned to endure. Some nights were worse than others. Some days.  
  
Seeing Sideswipe tended to make him relapse.  
  
The Autobots tried, at first, to push them together. Tried to make them share quarters, as though forcing interaction would force forgiveness.  
  
Sideswipe had many friends. He never used his assigned berth.  
  
Sunstreaker would lay alone in their empty suite and stare at the empty berth and feel as though it were a punishment. That he was the only one to blame.  
  
The one time they appeared in the room at the same time had ended in shed energon, torn plating, and Ratchet's fury. The medic's threats hadn't held a candle to the glare of Sideswipe's optics and the loathing in his face.  
  
Sunstreaker didn't know how to use his words.  
  
Sideswipe never bothered with them.  
  
After, they had sat down with Ratchet and Hoist, together and separately. The medics had tried to make them talk. It hadn't worked.  
  
The order came from Prime. They were given separate quarters.  
  
It was temp plating on a seeping line.  
  
Sunstreaker dreamed about Sideswipe a lot. The better times, of course, when they were brothers and friends and lovers and everything in between.  
  
And when he onlined to the exact opposite, he could only consider them nightmares. Like his recharge was taunting him with what he couldn't have anymore.  
  
Reconciliation was impossible. There was too much between them. Too much hate and pain and anger. It tangled up within them, to the same terrible beat as the Autobot-Decepticon war.  
  
It was why Sunstreaker was one of the few who knew that the war would never be over. Not until one side wiped out the other, no matter what Optimus preached. Megatron would not lay down arms. The Autobots, as a whole, would not forgive.  
  
Jazz caught him on a bad day, hacking his lock and slipping into Sunstreaker's half-empty room. He hadn't asked, had invited himself into Sunstreaker's berth and his lack of protest had been all the approval Jazz had needed.  
  
They lay together, Sunstreaker trying to match his ventilations to Jazz, but the difference in their frame types making that impossible. There would always be a dissonance, an off-rhythm. As though Sunstreaker needed further reminder that Jazz wasn't Sideswipe.  
  
And Jazz, as sharp as he was, didn't need to guess the reason for Sunstreaker's melancholy. He knew. He asked.  
  
Then again, the rumor mill in the Autobot traveled fast. Jazz no doubt knew about today's encounter. It hadn't gone well for anyone though most of Sunstreaker's damage was internal.  
  
Sideswipe was the one in Ratchet's tender care. Sunstreaker had been sent to his room like an errant human youngling.  
  
“When was the last time you actually spoke?” Jazz asked him when the silence in Sunstreaker's tiny room became too heavy to bear.  
  
Sunstreaker shuttered his optics, trying to remember a conversation that hadn't been full of bitterness or accusations or insults. That he couldn't remember said more about the state of their bond than anything.  
  
“It doesn't matter,” he said, and felt himself pulling back, away from the memories Jazz had invoked, the pain throbbing through his spark as sharp and incisive as a fresh blast to the chestplate.  
  
“Of course it does.”  
  
“No, Jazz. It doesn't. It can't and it won't. Nothing is going to fix this.”  
  
“I don't believe that.” Jazz's hand smoothed down his backstrut, reassuring and comforting all at once. Or at least trying to be. “You're brothers. Family. Most of us don't have that anymore.”  
  
Sunstreaker cycled a ventilation. “Technically, neither do I.”  
  
Silence filled the room then, Jazz not giving up, but probably thinking to redirect. Jazz was never one to let a matter lie.  
  
“What happened?” Jazz asked as he did so many times before.  
  
Sunstreaker could not answer. It was not so simple, this tangle of emotions and circumstances. He couldn't put it into plain Cybertronix. Not even English, with its limited words, could make it simple.  
  
“I couldn't be the brother he wanted,” Sunstreaker said. “And he wouldn't be the brother I needed.”  
  
Jazz made a noncommittal noise. “I'm sorry.”  
  
“It's a course of our own making. We only have ourselves to blame.” Sunstreaker prepared himself to force a systems recharge, if only to get away from the pain making itself loud and clear.  
  
His spark twisted in his chamber, reaching for something that wasn't there, and not even the comforting wash of Jazz's field could ease the agony.  
  
_“Sideswipe...”_  
  
_“No. I'm done.” His hand slices through the air, his field a sick wash of green fury against Sunstreaker's own. “I'm not doing this anymore.”_  
  
_Sideswipe whirls on a heel, storming away. Sunstreaker glares after him, hands clenched into fists,plating shaking from the effort of holding himself back._  
  
_This is the last time, he tells himself to the echo of Sideswipe's snarl in his audials. I won't chase him again._  
  
_It's just another tantrum. For all that Sunstreaker is known for his fits of fury, Sideswipe has the shortest temper._  
  
_He'll be back, Sunstreaker thinks._  
  
His optics shuttered open and Sunstreaker audibly cycled a ventilation.  
  
Sideswipe hadn't come back.  
  
Jazz's hand rested on his shoulder, as though saying that he was still here. And for that, Sunstreaker was grateful. He leaned into the embrace of Jazz's field, drew as much relief as he could.  
  
Jazz couldn't replace Sideswipe. Sunstreaker would never make him try.  
  
But for now, this would have to be enough.  


 

****


End file.
